A Certain Type of Fear
by Skate-815
Summary: After Charlie's death, Olivia considers the people she has left, and how she doesn't want to be alone anymore. One shot, Bolivia. Companion to Wants and Needs.


**As promised, here's my companion fic to Wants and Needs. I originally wrote these as entirely s****eparate** one shots, before I realised that if I changed the timeline on Peter's prospective, they could happen on the same night. Anyways, enjoy.

**Set just after Momentum Deferred, Olivia considers the most important people in her life.**

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As a child, Olivia had never been afraid of the dark. Or spiders, or snakes, or any sort of monster that may or may not have been crouched beneath her bed. No, fear at that tender age had been reserved for her step father, and indeed for a time, men in general. She had grown up suspicious of strangers and terrified of intimacy, and as a result, she'd had few friends in high school. No wonder they'd nicknamed her Solo.

The lack of friends, the almost sociopathic reluctance to trust was a habit she'd carried through into adulthood. In a way, she had always found that it came in useful, especially now that she worked for the darkest division of the FBI. Until last week, she could have counted the friends she possessed on one hand. Charlie, Peter, Astrid, Rachel and Walter who, as an extension of Peter she felt really ought to be included. And according to Peter, immediate family don't count anyway, so discarding her sister brought her down to a nice, lonely four.

Now, it was three.

Charlie was dead, and had been for some time, apparently. Dear Charlie, who had stuck with her through John, who had looked after her when she was nothing but a young recruit, and who had ultimately followed her to the Fringe Division. The division that had gotten him killed. She couldn't quite decide if the worse part was that he had died alone, or that she hadn't even noticed that that _thing_ inhabiting his body wasn't him. The fact that his own wife hadn't been able to tell gave her no real comfort. She was the one who specialised in the paranormal- there would have been signs- signs, it seemed that she had been too self involved to notice.

She hadn't cried yet, but she knew it would come eventually. Recently, she had been made no stranger to bereavement, and she couldn't help but wonder with first John, and then Charlie dying, who would be next? Rachel? Walter? Peter? Her heart clenched at the thought. Peter couldn't die. Bell had practically promised as much when he said she would need to keep Peter by her side, and he had never been one to be absent in her hour of need.

She moved to the kitchen for more whisky, kicking a stuffed animal from her path as she went. When Rachel had gotten pregnant to Greg, Olivia had painted on a smile, all the while secretly wondering how Rachel planned to bring up a child. Now, she saw clearly that the little girl was the best thing that could have happened to her sister, but up until now, children of her own had never been part of her immediate plans for the future. Tonight, however, she found herself wanting a change.

Charlie had been a husband. Rachel had Ella. Broyles had children of his own. Hell, even Peter and Walter had each other. If she were to die tomorrow, who would mourn her? Perhaps ten people would even remember her in six months time. She didn't want to die, but when it happened, she could think of nothing worse than being forgotten.

A voice in the back of her mind that sounded oddly like Peter told her she needed to calm down, and just stop thinking about it. There were still people that cared about her, she was just too frightened to see it right now. She picked up the phone on her kitchen counter and regarded it solemnly. She wanted to call Rachel but she was out of town with Ella, visiting Greg's parents. To interrupt their time together would be selfish, she knew but she needed someone to talk her out of this odd mood she was in.

Peter.

The idea came from nowhere, but once it occurred to her she couldn't put it from her mind. She could phone Peter. He would come if she asked him to, of that she was certain, but only one thing was stopping her. Peter didn't know about Charlie yet. Broyles had sent her straight home and had arranged for a briefing in the morning. Ever since their first real case last year, Peter and Charlie had rapidly become the two most important men in her personal life if not her professional one, but as far as she could tell, they had little time for each other. However she still had little inclination to break the news to Peter over the phone.

Over the past year, she and Peter had developed a trust and an emotional closeness that she could never have envisaged when she'd first looked at him in Iraq. But it had all been him- she knew only too well that Peter had dragged her into this friendship, and anything remotely intimate between them had been down to him- the time he'd hugged her when her dreams had taken a horrible turn; the time his hand brushed against hers on the bench; the way he had held her when he yanked her from the tank- he was the one who had worked hard for this bond between them. Tonight, she would have to admit she needed him, and the prospect terrified her.

It had never been like this with Charlie. With Peter, there was a spark. It had all began with a crush on his part. An entirely one sided affair that she noticed from the very beginning, but did her best to ignore in the interest of working with him. However agonizingly slowly, she felt herself looking at him more and more, wondering if he had always looked the way he did, or if he had simply gotten better looking. It had taken her just under a year to realise that seeing him was the highlight of her day, and about the same time to notice that he really was a lot more handsome than she'd originally given him credit for. Yes, she and Peter were headed straight for the familiar, forbidden territory of an office affair. The only questions that remained now were when and where it would begin. And who would be brave enough to make the first move?

It wouldn't be about that tonight, however. All she wanted was someone she felt comfortable around to just cry, and he was quite literally the last man standing in that category. Decision made, then. She needed someone and that someone would have to be Peter. She dialled before she could change her mind.

"Peter Bishop" he sounded different, busy almost. However once she'd heard his voice, hanging up would be an impossible task

"Peter, I need you" she blurted out, entirely too clumsily and emotional for her tastes. It was poorly phrased, but it felt good to admit it, if only this once. There was a silence. A terribly long silence until he spoke again,

"I'm on my way."

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**That's all folks. **

**The rest is up to your imaginations :)**


End file.
